The Invisible Man

The multifaceted slow-motion catastrophe in progress on Planet Earth is the knock-on effect of an intellectually capable creature trapped in spiritual infancy. Humanities inflated self image perceives its Self as separate, August, lord over and above the natural world: Pristine Awareness which is the "I AM" of all life is in Humanity a feral infant asleep in the womb of nature.

Humanity is invisible to itself, and like some motion picture vampire can not see its reflection. Like hairline cracks leading back to some point of impact, all of the problems: social, political, ecological, lead back to the same simple fact.

Humanity is invisible to its Self.

Meditation as a tool of awakening Pristine Awareness  (called by the ancient masters 'Enlightenment') is one way that an individual can, of them selves, make a difference.

The Purveyors of Sensation

The CARNIVAL! The festival of the flesh, what's not to like?

We are led and driven in life by sensation. The existential needs of the animal express themselves in sensation: hunger, thirst, varieties of comfort, the list goes on and on. Sensation is external to Pristine Awareness and yet elemental to the survival of its corporeal expression. It could be posited that all animal behavior is a response to sensation, and the statement "I want this, I need this" is a tacit admission that this wanting is external (though perhaps essential) to this "I".

Of necessity sensation is baked into our repertoire of behavioral norms, and this makes us vulnerable to manipulation by psychological parasites. The transparent cynicism of carny front-men comes to mind, and the "sensational" appeal of extravaganza, religious and secular. In his autobiography the American artist Thomas Hart Benton casually remarks that "The wealthy are dependent upon artists for the paraphernalia of their pretensions." Which is to say that a certain category of art produces a certain complex of psychological sensations for a certain social class. From the subtle to the gross we find everywhere the imprimatur of sensation.

Meditation is the cultivation of the silent Self which is the true litmus of the bitter and the sweet.

The Sacred and the Profane

Religions tend to crystallize around an assumption that there exists a realm of the Divine which must be sought out, sought after, and that one should find ones Self in subordination to the realm of the sacred. The supposition implied here is that there exists a pedestrian realm, a profane realm, that exists in parallel with the sacred, and that one must appeal to to the Divine in supplication, worship, and devotion in order to have access to this miraculous realm.

There is no separation. The motion of nature is like a child's merry-go-round: the Divinity of existence in a whorl that confutes the efficacies of Awareness.

Hence the inestimable value of meditation.

A grain of sand is a hurricane of Divinity.

The Light of Warp and Weft

An opening bud, flowers into the light of the sun which is the source of its existence

Pristine Awareness awakens into that vibrant Awareness which is the fabric of all that exists

Consciousness vis a vis Awareness

Consciousness is an event, Pristine Awareness is a phenomenon 

Being, Doing, and Enlightenment

Being is the expression of Suchness, and in the realm of the living, Doing is the imperative of Being: if there were no doing there would be no being. And we find that through millions upon millions of years Awareness (which is the stuff of life) has in its doing, refined its capacities of being toward the full flowering of Pristine Awareness: the awakening of the Universe to its Self.

The Being of any life form is woven of capacities and limitations, and we can recognize the character of any animal by its Doing. In the cultural histories of humanity's doing we find two dominant threads. One of them is the violence universally found in natural systems, and in that natural violence the cleverness of humanity has found a home for its animal genius. The other thread is the press of Pristine Awareness to Self realization, and this is the foundation of religion and philosophy.

The genius of religion and philosophy is not an animal genius: it is the pressure of Pristine Awareness seeking that liberation which is the flower of its Awakening.

This flowering has been called "Enlightenment"

The Athletes of Asceticism

The freedom which accompanies the awakening of Pristine Awareness is often mistaken for asceticism. But the ascetic is a spiritual athlete tying him or her self to a mental image, and successful asceticism is an achievement.

Of itself Pristine Awareness is free from the busyness of achievement, and the categories of freedom peculiar to Enlightenment must remain unknown to the athletes of asceticism.

The case of Niu-t'ou Fa-yung (d.657) is instructive in this regard.

Stimulus Response

The awakening of Pristine Awareness does not dispel the autonomous activity of the ancient imprinting of instinct. Like an old fashioned player-piano the air we breathe is used to play the timeless tunes of animal stimulus-response. The false self innocently hallucinated by the conscious mind dances to this tune and innocently imagines its self to be its author.

Meditation provides a foundation of silence making it possible for Pristine Awareness to awaken and to recognize that it is being played. This engenders an entirely new relationship with the Real, and with the vital energies of the animal.

The Mind becomes the Magic Gem, and the body the Magic Carpet. 

The "self" of Consciousness and the Beauty of Zen

The "self" of consciousness is an hallucination, and it is natural that this hallucination would say "I" to the antique bric-a-brac which are the accouterments of nature's press into the Universe's appetite for Self discovery.

The beauty of Zen is not just its unrelenting insistence on the awakening of Pristine Awareness. There is in the vast literature of and about Zen a preparation for the shock that accompanies an awakening from said hallucination.

Nothing is as it seems, nor is it otherwise, and in the analects of Zen we find a treasure trove: the natal utterance of newly awakened beings. My personal favorite will always be that of Lin Chi (d.907) who's master was the legendary Huang Po (d.850)

Lin-chi to Tai-yu

"So after all, there is not much in the Buddhism of Huang Po"

He then returned to his master.

Limbic Imagination

Every creature survives by exploiting its environment whether amoeba among the parameciums or deer in the shrubbery, and in this way life has leveraged its way from single cells to anthropoids. With the advent of complex nervous systems we find the extraordinary exploitive advantage of imagination. Flint knapping and till-and-sow are means of exploitation and are products of the imagination. 

Every expansion of facility broadens opportunities for exploitation, and an imagination operating in the absence of a moral culture will find in human society a rich field supine to exploitation.

The lizard brain reptilians live amongst us. It turns out they are just otherwise ordinary human beings without a conscience.

Culture and the Winds of Chaos

All culture is performative, and these "performances" are the naturally emerging signifiers that glue together groups of every stripe: protecting the ordered satisfaction of creaturely needs from the winds of chaos.

Equalibrium

Pristine Awareness has one aspiration: "Contentment". Disturbance of the field of "Contentment" gives rise to "The Spirit of Inquiry" and all behavior rises from this foundation.

Equilibrium is the essence of achievement.

Othering

I was reading an article today about "Othering". The article concerned the natural human division of "Us" and "Them" in communities and cultures.

But it made me think of humanity in general and the inconceivably varied voice of life its self

The Legacy of the Imbeciles

Though now popular terms of disparagement, Idiot, Imbecile, and Moron started life as diagnostics terms.

The idiot has the intellectual capacity of a normal human age two or three.

Your imbecile rises to the level expected of a four to seven year old.

And the moron tops out age ten.

It tears ones heart to encounter a creature bearing such challenges in the complex world in which we find ourselves.

It tears at ones mind to find them in positions of great responsibility.

Substance and Form

Pristine Awareness is substance, consciousness is form.

Pristine Awareness Has No Gender

Anybody who is yet uncertain about the relationship of consciousness to Pristine Awareness need only consult their gender affiliation. Pristine Awareness has no gender. Consciousness as a conditioned state of Awareness must filter its preferences through the hardwiring of the brain and thusly come up with a "conscious" response to external stimuli.

Pristine Awareness has no gender.

Awareness, Intuition, and the Smoke-Haze of Conscousness

The scope of Awareness is much broader and infinitely more subtile than that of consciousness. Consciousness is an accident to Awareness in a creature with an advanced nervous system, and like starting a fire with a magnifying glass by the light of the sun, consciousness brings the various wavelengths of Awareness to a point focus of fascination. This can be a powerful tool in the light of problem solving, but when Mind is identified with consciousness, consciousness becomes a blunt instrument dulling the acuity of Intuition.

When Mind becomes the conscious subordinate of Pristine Awareness, Intuition and Awareness in concert serve the spirit of inquiry. The spirit of inquiry is the guarantor all life, and the executor of certain death. 

Smoke gets in your eyes. 

The Creature of Awareness

The defining quality of any creature is Awareness. It is not uncommon to encounter vivid ramblings over "consciousness": is this creature "conscious", is that creature "conscious". Consciousness this, consciousness that, consciousness, consciousness, consciousness. Be all these hair-splitting researches as they may, there can be no doubt that an amoeba is aware. Slime molds are aware. Planarians are aware. 

Mind, consciousness, and psychologies are conditioned states of Awareness in creatures with nervous systems sufficiently evolved to support such sophistications. Awareness is simply aware.

The entire thrust of Zen is the awakening of Awareness.

Where is the residence of mastery. Is Awareness the entranced slave of some animal, or does the animal serve an awakened Awareness. What is the Who?

The starry universe is branch and stem.

The realm of living creatures, the bud.

A bursting into flower: the awakening of Pristine Awareness.

Confusion Vis-a-Vie Willful Blindness

Sometimes it is difficult to keep in mind that no-one is confused on purpose. Certainty is an instinctual survival enhancing trait, and the mind in its quest for "certainty" spontaneously seeks to ferret out and eschew error. So: since confusion exists in the mind as naturally occurring entropy, and clarity exists as the dissipation of said entropy, it would seem that everyone has the right to their own confusion, and that everyone has at least the potential for clarity.

Be that as it may, an old, tired, shopworn phrase comes to mind.

"There is none so blind as one who will not see"

The Knowable, the Known, and the Knower

The knowable is the lucent resonance of Being. The known exists as resonances established in the receptive stillness of Pristine Awareness. The knower is the solipsistic resonance of individual Awareness.

The knower as an entropy dissipating resonance feeds upon the lucency of Being to firm up the cell wall of its Existence. Excreting discord and assimilating the satisfactory.

From Thucydides (about 2,500 years ago)

"The powerful do as they will, and the weak endure what they must"

And Athens went on to lose the war.

A Word (or two) About Nietzsche

An intelligent sociopath (and fiercely proud of it) Fredrick Nietzsche wrote with the panache of a high-paid opinion columnist. His hostility to decorum found in nineteenth century Europe a target rich environment, and he delighted in the slaughter of sacred cows. He seems to have considered his own thought a diamond mine of brilliant insight, and could connect disparate dots into a cat's-cradle of "logical" inference. In a phrase once addressed to me after an episode of bar-room erudition "if you can't dazzle them with logic, baffle them with bull shit."

What a guy!

C. G. Jung at the Mall

Carl Gustav Jung (1875/1961) sojourned to Africa in 1925. He stood overlooking a seemingly endless plain, seething with astonishing varieties and astounding numbers of life forms, and he had an epiphany.

But for his standing there, in the midst of that seethe of life there was a total absence of awakened Awareness.

Wisdom is the Prosperity of Awareness

Thought is the product of cogitation: the mind turning over the sock-drawer of its contents, rummages through the objects of its present fascination.

Intuition is the product of Awareness: the spirit of inquiry in synaptic resonance has connected the dots of experience and a previously unimagined symmetry emerges: the spirit of inquiry enriches the soil of intuition, and Pristine Awareness is the field of its endeavors.

Awareness is the Hall of Wisdom

Not transcendence

but

Transformation

the distillation of ones passage into finer states of meaning

Wisdom is the prosperity of Awareness

The Snake and the Frog

Shakespeare puts in Hamlet's mouth words to the effect that "nothing is good or bad save seeming makes it so". A brilliant gem from great antiquity has "nothing is as it seems, nor is it otherwise". My private view is that all things are just as they are, and that things seem different to the snake and to the frog because they are.

The figures of the meaning saturated gestalt are cut from the fabric of Awareness.

Governance (paraphrasing Confucius)

 

"Good Governance is responsible maintenance of the State."

"Bad Governance is irresponsible use of the State."

Abundance

Any amount of anything

Is infinitely more

Than an abundance of nothing

Instruction in Zen

From the analects: 

Monk: "Pray instruct me in Zen."

Master: "Have you eaten?"

Monk: "Yes"

Master: "Then wash your bowl."

It is said that this exchange produced the desired Awakening.

The Centipedede's Dilemma

A rich history has come down to us by way of records kept in ancient monasteries. Monks of the Rinzai Zen tradition were there expressly to pursue the change of being described as "Sudden Enlightenment". The social disciplines and meditative practices of these institutions were designed to eliminate any impediment to the achievement of this end, and even in these carefully articulated circumstances many acolytes failed to cross over. So how in the world is somebody in secular circumstances to achieve this Cosmic change of being?

The "Centipede's Dilemma" is an Aesop-like tale concerning the centipede's psychological collapse when confronted with the question of the facility of his many legs and the circumambulations necessary to his daily life. Well, the narrative of "The Ten Bulls" which we encounter in Buddhist lore directly addresses the struggle and successful resolution of the psychological upheaval inevitable when we begin to realize how much of what we have been in life could be described as: Cosmic Awareness enslaved to an animal. 

The silence of mind we cultivate in meditation makes possible for Awareness to come to the fore. The animal is the ride and beatings will not improve its quality of life. What is necessary is that Awareness infuse and befriend the natural inclinations of the animal. The privations and austerities of monastic life are most certainly an accelerant to the self discovery necessary to the awakening of Pristine Awareness, but these bracing privations and austerities are not possible, or even advisable, in the press of secular existence.

Good will and good humor and meditation are advised.

Troubled Births

Loosely paraphrasing from the analects:

Master: "I see from your countenance that you have entered the realm of Awareness!"

Monk: "Yes, but my joy is that of one who has found a precious gem beneath a pile of dung."

Carl Jung remarked that "People who live unconsidered lives get along just fine. It is when some aspect of the Collective Unconscious treads unbidden into the realm of Consciousness that there is trouble." Neurosis is often a crisis of discovery.

"The Ten Bulls" of Zen poetically relates the struggle that even an individual with some degree of preparation has with integrating the discovered Unconscious framework of the personality with the new forming personhood of Awareness. The new creature of Awareness finds its Self a stranger in a strange land.

Meditation provides a foundation of facticity which smooths the birth of the child of the Universe.